Night Broken (Mercy Thompson, #8)(59)

Hadn’t Guayota made some reference to the sun when he was talking about Christy? I tried to visualize Kyle’s story, to put Flores in the place of Guayota, but all I could see was a wizened old witch with a roomful of kids that she was scaring. Witches feed off other people’s pain; I wondered if they could feed off terror as well.

“So one day, he jumped, the old devil, he jumped out of the top of El Teide and captured her for himself. Loud she cried and hard she fought, but she was no match for old Guayota. She could not burn him with her fierceness, for though she was the fire of day, he was born in the fire of the earth, which is more ferocious even than the sun. Nor could she blind him with her bright beauty because his eyes were used to the molten rock of his home. And when she got too bright for his eyes, the old dog, he just closed his eyes and used his ears and his nose, which were as sharp as any shepherd’s dog’s and more so.

“He took her down to his home and caged her inside the volcano. For weeks, the sky was dark, and smoke filled the air. It was then that Guayota’s children were born, while he held Magec in his caves. They are the tibicenas, fierce, hairy black dogs that emerged from the mountain in those days when Guayota held Magec his prisoner. The only light that shone on Tenerife was Magec’s light, escaping here and there from the caves in the old volcano, and the light of the tibicenas’ eyes.

“But the people of the island were frightened that they had no sun. They called and prayed to Achamán, he who created the world. Achamán listened to the cries of the people and came down to the volcano to rescue Magec. Guayota fought mightily because he did not want to give up Magec. The volcano spewed fire and rock, and many died as the two gods battled. At last, knowing that he could not win, Guayota called up the fires of the earth to swallow the island and Magec, so that if he could not have her, neither could anyone else.

“Achamán took Guayota and stuffed him in the volcano, stopping the fire and smoke and rescuing the people of the island. He freed Magec and sent her racing in the sky once more, fierce and bright as she should be. But she is always watchful when she flies over the top of El Teide, lest old Guayota catch her once again.”

Kyle stopped, smiled a little. “I told the story to my dad once. He told me that it was a primitive attempt to explain a volcanic eruption. El Teide is an active volcano, the last eruption was a couple hundred years ago. He also pointed out that the reactions on the sun’s surface are hotter than any volcano magma.”

Talk turned to the night’s adventures, which Adam was more than capable of telling. I drifted off into a dream of a witch who changed children into great, shaggy black dogs that looked like long-haired versions of the dog I’d shot, the one who’d turned into a man. The man raised his dead head to meet my eyes with his. His eyes were the color of lava.

“Mercy,” he said. “Where is my sun?”

“Mercy, wake up,” said Adam.

I sat up like a scalded cat and winced because everything hurt—especially the burn on my cheek.

“Okay,” said Laughingdog. “Adam’s been filling us in on your night. Were you awake for all of Kyle’s story?”

I yawned. “Yep. I didn’t fall asleep until we got to our part. Sorry. Long day.”

“Fine.” Laughingdog settled back into his chair, one leg up and the other doing a restless dance on the floor. “Kyle’s story makes me pretty sure that Guayota is one of the great manitous.”

I frowned at him. “Manitou” was an Algonquin word for spirit, the spirit that lived in all things: in rocks, in rivers, in mountains. Great manitou … I made some quick jumps of logic. “When you say great manitous, you’re talking about creatures like Coyote?”

“That’s right. Mostly right. No.” He made a frustrated sound. “Coyote, Raven, Wolf, are different than manitous. Coyote is the spirit of mischief, of second chances, of adaptation—the archetype of coyotes. It is true that he shares characteristics with the great manitous. Like him, they can take the shape of people, though they are not people. They are powerful in their sphere of influence.

“Mostly the great manitous ignore us and pay attention only to those things that matter to them. The Columbia has a great manitou, I can feel it sometimes, but I’ve never heard of it manifesting itself, not even in stories.”

“You think Guayota is a great manitou, the spirit of the volcano,” I said. “Sort of like Pele in Hawaii?”

He nodded.

“So what is he doing here? Shouldn’t he be stuck somewhere within a few thousand miles of where he belongs?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he grew bored.” He shrugged. “If he were Coyote, that would be the answer, wouldn’t it? Maybe Guayota grew lonely. The only thing I know is that, although great manitous can manifest and travel for a time, they do need a strong connection to their spirit-home. Without that connection, they will return to their spirit shape and be pulled home.”

“So we need to find out what his connection is,” said Adam.

“Right,” agreed Laughingdog. “But here’s the part that had me—” He substituted “driven to find you” for “breaking out of jail.” He was going to have to be smoother if he didn’t want Kyle to realize something was up. At least he was careful to look at me and not Kyle when he changed up his words. Looking at Kyle would have been a dead giveaway. “I had a few dreams, didn’t mean much to me until you showed up, and I had that freaking nasty Seeing. I would have let it go, but then I had a worse dream.”